Be thankful you were born after the smallpox vaccine

The anniversary of smallpox eradication is a good time for some vaccine appreciation.

 Civil War vaccination kits, discovered in a drawer, yield genetic clues to how smallpox was defeated

As the world anxiously pins its hopes on vaccines to halt the coronavirus pandemic, scientists are still learning from the first global scourge to be eradicated by vaccination. Ancient-DNA sleuths analyzing Civil War-era artifacts with 21st-century sequencing techniques have recreated five genomes of viral vaccines mustered to fight smallpox in the 1860s, finding they were quite different from those used a century later to finally wipe out the disease.

 Drug to Treat Smallpox Approved by F.D.A., a Move Against Bioterrorism

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first drug intended to treat smallpox — a move that could halt a lethal pandemic if the virus were to be released as a terrorist bioweapon or through a laboratory accident. The antiviral pill, tecovirimat, also known as Tpoxx, has never been tested in humans with smallpox because the disease was declared eradicated in 1980, three years after the last known case. But it was very effective at protecting animals deliberately infected with monkeypox and rabbitpox, two related diseases that can be lethal.

 How smallpox devastated the Aztecs – and helped Spain conquer an American civilization 500 years ago

Epidemics are nothing new, of course. And some widespread infectious dieseases have profoundly changed the course of human history. Five hundred years ago, in February of 1519, the Spaniard Hernán Cortés set sail from Cuba to explore and colonize Aztec civilization in the Mexican interior. Within just two years, Aztec ruler Montezuma was dead, the capital city of Tenochtitlan was captured and Cortés had claimed the Aztec empire for Spain. Spanish weaponry and tactics played a role, but most of the destruction was wrought by epidemics of European diseases.

 Is Undead Smallpox Reemerging From Siberian Graves?

Scientists debate the dangers of a new plague emerging from permafrost thaws.

 Russian Lab Explosion Raises Question: Should Smallpox Virus Be Kept Or Destroyed?

Should humankind hold on to the live virus to conduct research on treatments, tests and vaccines in case smallpox were to reemerge? Or is it more prudent to destroy all samples of the live virus to avoid any accidental or intentional release and instead rely on sequenced gene fragments for further research?

 Synthetic Biology Could Bring a Pox on Us All

New methods are making it easier than ever to produce life-saving vaccines—and life-taking viruses that humanity is not prepared to fight.

 What the world learned in eradicating smallpox: Unity mattered

Forty years ago, the world celebrated the vanquishing of a formidable foe, smallpox, which had maimed and killed millions for centuries. On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated. That milestone, reached while the Cold War still raged, is an example of what the public health world can achieve when it works together — and is particularly resonant in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The campaign against smallpox took 21 years and required not just vaccinations but tracking and isolating new cases.

 What's The Real Story About The Milkmaid And The Smallpox Vaccine?

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a beautiful milkmaid. Her face was flawless, her complexion peaches and cream, her smile confident as she bragged, "I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face." A 13-year-old orphan boy heard the milkmaid's boastful declaration of immunity — or so the story goes. The boy was Edward Jenner, an apprentice to a country surgeon. Jenner's name would one day be famous for developing the world's first vaccine, which would eventually rid the earth of the scourge of smallpox. And the story of his boyhood inspiration for developing the vaccine is a classic of medical history, told in an 1837 biography and repeated endlessly over the years.

Judging Jenner: was his smallpox experiment really unethical?

You have to pity Edward Jenner. He develops a vaccination for smallpox, saves countless lives in the process and eradicates one of the greatest scourges of humanity, yet is often accused of conducting unethical experiments.

The Rise and Fall of Smallpox

On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization officially pronounced victory in the fight against smallpox, confirming that no known cases of the dreaded killer existed anywhere on the planet. Today, guarded laboratories in Atlanta and Moscow hold the only known stores of the virus. Some experts say these should be destroyed, whereas others believe they should be kept around for research purposes just in case smallpox somehow remerges.

Better Know A Plague: Smallpox

The World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, but two stockpiles remain in high-security labs, one in the United States and the other in Russia. Scientists have been arguing over keeping or eradicating these stocks for years.

Forgotten NIH smallpox virus languishes on death row

World Health Organization lacks resources to witness destruction of stocks.

How Civil War Soldiers Gave Themselves Syphilis While Trying to Avoid Smallpox

Plaguing the world since ancient times, smallpox brought down powerful rulers like Pharaoh Ramses V and has been credited with aiding the fall of Rome and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. It also led us to discover vaccination. By 1861, the year in which the Civil War broke out, the Western world had been vaccinating against smallpox for over half a century.

Infectious diseases: Smallpox watch

Frozen mummies and envelopes of scabs could contain remnants of one of history's most prolific killers.

Resistant

Why a century-old battle over vaccination continues to rage.

Scientists recreate an extinct virus, triggering new warnings about controversial research

For years there have been warnings that advances in science could make it possible to cook up killer diseases in laboratories and unleash them on the world. This week came news that scientists at the University of Alberta have put together from scratch a relative of the smallpox virus — and a reminder that the threat of deadly viruses created by humans is more than theoretical. The smallpox virus, which triggered brutal disease for centuries, was declared eradicated in 1980 after a successful global effort to end its reign of terror. But some scientists fear that it could be revived through what’s known as synthetic biology — the ability to make a virus by putting together by the recipe outlined in its genetic code.

Smallpox Could Again Be a Serious Threat

If we don’t take steps now, synthetic biology could let bad actors re-create the devastating virus.

Smallpox: Eradicating the Scourge

An estimated 300 million people died from smallpox in the 20th century alone. This virulent disease, which kills a third of those it infects, is known to have co-existed with human beings for thousands of years. As the world's population grew, and travel increased, so the virus that Edward Jenner called the "speckled monster" grasped every opportunity to colonise the world.

The first smallpox vaccine changed the world—but we're still not sure what was in it

It only took 181 years to eradicate smallpox once we had a way to inoculate against it. That cocktail was the first successful vaccine, and the basis for most future immunizations. And we're still not really sure what was in it.

The Smallpox Vaccine Racket

The oft mentioned lie smallpox vaccination saved millions and eliminated smallpox is a very important lie that justifies all sorts of vaccine and drug horrors along with the general failure of Allopathy to cure anything.

Why the world can't bring itself to destroy smallpox once and for all

There are lots of arguments for destroying the virus, which would eliminate the chance it could escape and possibly ravage billions of unvaccinated people. But there are also reasons that the WHO keeps punting, some officially spoken, some not.